[ltp] TP760/RH7.2 cdrom problem

[M. Leo Cooper]

I upgraded my TP760XL from RH 7.1 to 7.2. For various reasons, I actually
did a fresh install, rather than an upgrade.

After the first new bootup, everything seemed to be working except the
cd drive. When I attempted to mount a CD ROM, I kept getting an error
message, "/dev/cdrom is not a valid block device". After slapping my
forehead a few times (duh..), I figured out that the cdrom kernel module
had not loaded. A '/sbin/lsmod' confirmed this.

The fix for this was easy enough. Just adding "/sbin/insmod cdrom" to
/etc/rc.d/rc.local would work, or better yet, adding the following lines:

        MODULE=cdrom
	INSTALLED=`/sbin/lsmod | grep "$MODULE"`

	if [ -z "$INSTALLED" ]  # Not installed.
	then
	  /sbin/insmod "$MODULE"
	fi


All right, it's fixed, but why does the problem occur in the first
place? The 'kudzu' hardware detection is supposed to see the cdrom drive
and load the module on bootup, I think, unless maybe someone sprayed
weedkiller on the kudzu, I guess. Or, possibly the module should autoload
when a user attempts to mount a CD ROM.

I didn't have this problem with RH 7.1 on identical hardware, and a
test install of Mandrake 8.1 also worked fine with the cd drive (but
had other problems, such as difficulty in initializing the sound chip).
Why should I have had to resort to a kludge fixup? Maybe it was because I
used the free download edition of RH7.2, rather than the official version.


Mendel



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